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You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

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Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#41

Post by closed »

azhenley wrote: post #40
reality_czech wrote: post #39

Wow. I don't even know where to start on this one. My experience with academia is that everyone is scrambling to get grants and get published. Nobody ever asked questions about where the grants came from. A lot (probably even the majority at the time) was from the department of defense, and explicitly targetted to create weapons. Professors spent a huge amount of their time writing grant proposals. It's like pitching…

It seems like once a week I see comments like this. This was not my experience at all. With internships, I made over 60k a year in grad school. I worked on projects of my choice. I did not do a postdoc after graduating. I graduated from a small, unranked department and got a tenure-track position at an R1 university in a top 75 department.

What field? Even at top tier institutions I've never seen grad students make more than 40k, but I'm thinking of research heavy PhDs, where you continue your research over the summer.

Edits: ah, just saw in your profile it was software engineering!

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#42

Post by azhenley »

closed wrote: post #41
azhenley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like once a week I see comments like this. This was not my experience at all. With internships, I made over 60k a year in grad school. I worked on projects of my choice. I did not do a postdoc after graduating. I graduated from a small, unranked department and got a tenure-track position at an R1 university in a top 75 department.

What field? Even at top tier institutions I've never seen grad students make more than 40k, but I'm thinking of research heavy PhDs, where you continue your research over the summer. Edits: ah, just saw in your profile it was software engineering!

I continued my research at companies every summer. Seems fairly common in CS, so you get access to real data/systems and good salaries.

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#43

Post by lazyjeff »

closed wrote: post #41
azhenley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like once a week I see comments like this. This was not my experience at all. With internships, I made over 60k a year in grad school. I worked on projects of my choice. I did not do a postdoc after graduating. I graduated from a small, unranked department and got a tenure-track position at an R1 university in a top 75 department.

What field? Even at top tier institutions I've never seen grad students make more than 40k, but I'm thinking of research heavy PhDs, where you continue your research over the summer. Edits: ah, just saw in your profile it was software engineering!

I had the same experience as the grandparent, and averaged 70K a year. I had a lot of great opportunities during my Ph.D so I was really fortunate, but I felt that many students I met during internships were serial interns and got fellowships too, so it seemed at the time like most strong PhD students in Computer Science averaged about 60K a year and enjoyed it. Also note that you don't pay FICA (Social Security / Medicare) on your PhD stipend so 25K is like 30K.

I graduated in 5 years into my dream tenure-track job, and 7/8 of the students in my cohort got good tenure-track jobs too (the remaining one went back to running a successful business unrelated to her research). The school I'm at pays $40K/year stipends for PhD students, including the summer; so I think many people only count the 9-month stipend for PhD students which is about 27K, and not the summer salary.

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#44

Post by Fomite »

bvc35 wrote: post #9

The bulk of academic work is chasing grants, not "curiosity driven research". If universities want professors not to leave in droves to tech companies that will consistently give them funding and cut away the bullshit that eats up the majority of a professor's time, they should try competing, rather than bemoaning that professors are no longer following the sacred path of academic asceticism.

While I would like to stop chasing grants as much as the next tenure track assistant professor, I don't think it's fair to characterize "the bulk" of academic work as chasing grants.

If anything, it's responding to emails ;)

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#46

Post by sid-kap »

azhenley wrote: post #40
reality_czech wrote: post #39

Wow. I don't even know where to start on this one. My experience with academia is that everyone is scrambling to get grants and get published. Nobody ever asked questions about where the grants came from. A lot (probably even the majority at the time) was from the department of defense, and explicitly targetted to create weapons. Professors spent a huge amount of their time writing grant proposals. It's like pitching…

It seems like once a week I see comments like this. This was not my experience at all. With internships, I made over 60k a year in grad school. I worked on projects of my choice. I did not do a postdoc after graduating. I graduated from a small, unranked department and got a tenure-track position at an R1 university in a top 75 department.

60k per year doing internships? I thought a typical tech internship paid $5-8k/month, which means at most $25k over the summer. (Maybe my number is for undergrads, and grad student interns get paid significantly more?)

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#47

Post by Fomite »

sgt101 wrote: post #36

Why does "faculty working elsewhere mean cancelled classes" - if the faculty is paid for 100% by facebook, but works 20% at the university does this not mean that the students receive a bonus teacher? Is there no scope for enrichment of computer science by industry? And what is "academic computer science"? I mean, look down at your keyboard - nothing in computer science is purely academic; it's the most applied of do…

Working 80% for Facebook basically precludes the time commitment for teaching classes.

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#48

Post by Fomite »

ansgri wrote: post #10
sharemywin wrote: post #6

I find the idea odd. if you want to contribute to academic research create a grant(s) with your budget.

That's a big can of worms. This dual employment may have its drawbacks (I think mostly due to the fact that this is a mega-corp; for a small bootstrapped company it's only good, I think), but consider the following two topics: * People would work in academic institution XOR your company: you cannot give the grant to the best in your field and still have him work for you, so you'd always want to hire the best you can,…

It's trivial to structure grants (or indeed contracts) such that they have concrete deliverables, even for academic research.

Re: You Cannot Serve Two Masters: The Harms of Dual Affiliation

#49

Post by Fomite »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13
sharemywin wrote: post #6

I find the idea odd. if you want to contribute to academic research create a grant(s) with your budget.

Then they wouldn't own the research and the resultant capabilities by default. Yes they do and might continue open sourcing most of their research, but they have right of first refusal to publish, which is really the most important piece.

It's relatively easy to structure a grant program such that the rights are either shared, or can be licensed for a pretty nominal amount. There are other sectors of academic research that are quite good at this.
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